Fighting Hunger: Add Your Voice on World Food Day

Today is World Food Day. I know, this seems like something that should happen every day, right? After all, we eat every day.

Actually, not everyone eats every day, and that’s the point. The idea behind World Food Day is that if enough people throw their time, money and voices behind the issue of extreme hunger, real policy changes will be made that will eventually end hunger. Today is a day for all of us to focus on mobilizing that time, money and those voices.

Why Do We Need World Food Day?

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, there are 868 million people in the world who are undernourished. This means that the amount of food they’re able to get does not fulfill their biological energy requirements. This is not an issue of feeling a few pangs of hunger between meals, this is an issue of people dying because they’re not getting enough food.

If you stop and think about it for just a minute, this starts to seem really ridiculous. This should be something we can fix, especially since we actually do produce enough food to feed everyone in the world right now. For some reason, it’s just not getting to them. Check out this great infographic from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.

The Role of Volunteering in Fighting Hunger

As a matter of fact, it is something we can fix – together.

That’s why World Food Day is a day of action – this isn’t just about talking a big game, it’s about doing something that makes a real difference. And that is exactly what volunteer engagers like you are best at organizing!

World Food Day partners are trying to mobilize people in communities all over the world to start working on the issue of chronic hunger. You can be their feet, and hands and voices on the ground. Through you, the vision of World Food Day can be realized. As the website says, “When each of us does our part we can end the needles suffering of nearly a billion people worldwide.”

How You Can Join In

The infrastructure for creating this change is already there, built by organizations like VolunteerMatch that leverage technology to connect you with your supporters, and at your own organization through the work you do every day with your volunteers. All you need to do is energize the community you’ve already built around your mission.

To provide some inspiration, here are a couple of great programs already launched for hunger-related organizations:

In partnership with the Walmart Foundation, VolunteerMatch is providing hunger-related organizations with free access to our premium tools, as well as special free trainings and resources developed to address your unique challenges. We’ve also developed a new Hunger Volunteering Map that displays all hunger-related volunteering opportunities across the entire U.S., making it even easier for volunteers in your communities to find you.

Yum! Brands’ annual World Hunger Relief campaign, powered by Razoo, is the world’s largest private sector hunger relief effort, spanning more than 120 countries and engaging over one million employees to raise awareness, volunteerism and funds for the World Food Programme and other hunger relief agencies. You can help out today by spreading the word to your volunteer about donating whatever time and money they can.

Need some ideas for hunger-related volunteer opportunities? Here are some great ones from the VolunteerMatch network:

About The Author

Shari Tishman

Shari led Online Marketing and Communications at VolunteerMatch from 2010-2015. After working with nonprofits for 9 years, she moved over to the corporate sector and is now leading Inbound Marketing for a tech company in San Francisco.